Ivo! Evoe! Hail, Kore! Ivo! Evoe!

One of the morning prayers that I say is, "Mother, Wash away from my eyes the enchantment of forgetfulness. Allow me, as much as I can know, as much as I can see, to realize that we are all connected. Remind me Mother, that it's all just You pouring You into You." A bit of this prayer is based upon a quote from J. D. Salinger and I forget the source from which I borrowed the rest of it, but I'm grateful to that person for helping me to articulate how I feel about those times when we allow ourselves to be ensorcelled by the Overculture into thinking that the world can be divided into the Sacred and the Mundane, that there are "muggles," that magic and mystery and connection to the Ineffable is what happens only inside a sacred circle, censed with sage and inscribed with occult symbols. And I work hard most days, I do, to keep my eyes open, to see with True Sight, to remember that it's all one immense and breathtakingly beautiful and dangerous and perfect and safe and glittering Web and that I'm a node on that Web, but also that I am the Web and the Web is me. I work at it and some days I do better than others.

And then some days, Grace comes flooding through some phloem in the Universe and I'm synchronistically, randomly, at the right corner, on the right street, at the right moment and there's no work involved at all. The Web is so real and visible and crystal clear that I can't imagine, literally can't imagine, how it can ever seem otherwise. And then I'm the Web wondering how that node ever imagined itself anything but a part of the whole. And then even that is part, a perfect part, of the Web.

I had to go to my office this morning, Sabbat or no, but I left at 2:00 to head home, do some errands, and make ready for Ostara. Sitting at the light, I caught a glimpse of her: a girl at that exact age after her childhood and before her teens. She was reedy and thin, not self-conscious, but unconsciously conscious of herself in the way that no child can ever be. She carried some kind of a book or folder, up flat against her chest, and was skip-running a bit to catch up to her father. I looked away, waiting for the light to turn green, thinking of what needed to be done when I got home. I glanced back; she and her father were now at the corner, waiting for the same light to change. She said something to her father, I could see her braces.

And, then, it happened. All in a moment, all of the enchantment washed away from my eyes, and my body and all my senses were simply, perfectly, by Grace, a mechanism for perceiving the Web from inside the Web, the Web's own unconscious self-consciousness of itself. The sun got inside the girl's hair, which was that heart-wrenchingly beautiful color of carroty-red that is not replicated anywhere else in nature. Her hair was simply, perfectly, by Grace, a mechanism for the Sun to make itself manifest and to show its beauty; without that hair, that color, at that moment, on that girl, at that corner, the Sun could never have been all that it was born to be, and the Sun knew it and I knew it and we were both awed by it.

And there, sitting at the red light, surrounded by the city, headed for the Teddy Roosevelt bridge, there, I was -- and best of all, knew myself to be -- in the presence of The Kore, in the sunlight, on the day of Osara. Not, symbolically, not metaphorically, not in any of the ways that it would make sense to say that I was, just a few feet North of that girl, in the presence of The Kore, but, simply, in the presence of The Kore. Not that The Kore "rode" her or that she somehow pulled The Kore down into her. Not that she stopped being a flesh-and-blood girl with a history and a future and braces. Not that she had ever not been The Kore and not that . . . . Well, that is why the Goddess says, "And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire." Words stop working.

And the light changed and I turned my eyes, full of tears and light, back to the road and, shaking, drove on, deeper into the Web.

May your Ostara be blessed, may all that is good and healthy and fresh bloom into your life, and may you have reason to exclaim, "Hail, Kore! Ivo Evoe!"

Picture found here.

A Poem for Ostara

The Enkindled Spring
~D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Picture found here.

Hail Kore!

Ivo! Evoe!

We're here in this bursting period between Imbolc and Ostara, one of the most dynamic sections of the Wheel of the Year. The "Sun Band" on my Ecological Calendar has been growing wider and wider.

If you've learned to look with love and to pay attention, the trees, at least here in the miraculous MidAtlantic, are no longer the dead brown and grey of Winter. Every branch seems to be suffused with green and, when you cast your eyes over a grove of trees, there's the tiniest, almost-here-almost-not haze of pink, a pink that long-term lovers of the Potomac know is the first color to precede that yellowish-green!-alive haze that happens just a week before ACTUAL LEAVES burst forth. It will be a few weeks, yet, but you can hear the gentle beginnings of the sound. And no branch is still "just" a branch. Every single branch now sports buds, buds that have somehow developed between December, when the snow drove me inside and, well, and today, when I was able to go sit on my rock and make love to my maples and my birch and my crape myrtles and my figs and my . . . . You know.

The app on my iPhone tells me that tomorrow's Full Moon is known as the Quickening Moon. Everything in my blood says: Yes, yes, and, ah! yes! Almost paralyzes you.

And, I have snowdrops in bloom!

/Curtsies

This morning, when I left for work, they were no where to be seen.

But when I came home this afternoon, a good dozen of the 75 that Landscape Guy and I planted last November were in bloom in the Northern (I know!!!) cottage garden. I walked past. Did a double take. Walked back. Literally fell on my knees. I can't think when anything has made my heart fly so high or my spirit soar so wildly. ("Too easily pleased," my mother used to say of me. It's true, but it's a blessing, not a curse.) I think that I need to make this an annual event, a hanami when I can text all of my friends and say, "Come over this afternoon for champagne, dates w/ goat cheese, radishes with bread and butter, and snowdrop viewing!" Next year, if you're on my email list, be ready!!!

What makes you foolishly happy in the early Spring?

Kore!

The older that I get (and I am getting deliciously old), in some odd manner, the more that I look forward to Ostara. When I was v young, I was quite desperate to be thought older, experienced, sophisticated, wise. And the holidays that moved me were High Summer, and Lughnasadah, and Samhein. But now that I've lived a long time and figured out, well, a few things, I find myself quite predisposed to love maidens and to look forward to Ostara, when we all celebrate the energy of the Maiden, the Kore, the v young woman who is just OUT There.

The last few days, I've gone outside to just sit in the afternoon sun and soak in the energy that is fizzing up from the Earth, through the trees, from all the perennials, via the shrubs, from the thatched lawn. I sit on my rock near my magnolias and I drink in the Sun and I bathe in the energy of everything that is growing, beginning, emerging. I can feel the power of AIR just overwhelming everything. Now that I'm old, I've learned how to recognize this energy, absorb it, be nourished by it. I didn't always know that.

The other day, at work, a young woman whom I know only to nod to on the elevator showed up at my door, distraught, near tears, "I know I really don't know you, please don't be mad; I just need to talk; I'll leave if you want, I'm sorry, etc." We work in the heart of the Patriarchy; not all of the women who've "made it" here are predisposed to be helpful to each other. Goddess knows, what I've gotten has been a mixture of censure and support. I sat there, staring at her in her immaculate, size -two-suit, and realized how easy it would be for me to send her away, make her feel even more awkward, give her the feeling that, by seeking honest help from an older woman she'd done the one unforgivable thing in our Bramble Bush of a profession.

And, then, because I am a mother-in-law, aunt, and, I hope, friend to young women, I got up, shut my door, pushed over my box of kleenex, fished out my flask of the water of life, and went over to hug this lovely young person whom I hardly know. I hope that, whatever else life requires of me, and she has, I'm willing to note, required more than a bit, I'm capable of remembering what it was like to be standing, terrified, upon the brink, and, yet, capable of hoping that the next cycle is a bit easier than the one that I got to dance.

When I was young, I got zero support or love from older women for being young. The few moments of support that I got were for what I could become when I was older, for the ways in which I could become, as they were, older, sedate, controlled. I can feel the Goddess calling me to go beyond that. To support younger women who are capable of moving forward without holding back.

May I be equal to the task. Blessed Ostara to you.

Ostara

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Lines Written in Early Spring

William Wordsworth (1798)


I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Picture found here.

Spring

Come, Ostara!

I love Joanna May's work.

Her etsy shop is here.

Liftoff!

Houston, we have Spring.

This morning, on my way to work I could see tiny little crocus buds. When I came home this afternoon: there they were, the first full blossoms of 2009. (The hellebores are still in bud, so, even though they "showed up" first, I'm giving pride of place to the crocus, that flower of Narcissus.)

I saw a morning dove this morning and -- finally! -- a robin this afternoon in my backyard. And, I have the windows open and it's 71 Al Gore degrees in Arlington right now. Thank the Goddess; I'd had about as much windy cold as I could stand.

Thank You Yukio Ozaki.

We're a mere 18 days away from Ostara, a name that modern witches give to the Spring Equinox. My garden and trees are shrouded in snow. Last night, the wind wailed like a bereft lover and the stars held solemn wake in the ice-clear sky. Miss Thing and I huddled, I swathed in sweatshirts and socks, beneath cotton covers, duvets, tightly-woven tapestry, linen sheets. This morning, there was ice forming, again, on the beautiful Potomac River, just above the spot where it runs by the Lincoln Memorial.

And, yet, all my thoughts are for the Kore, for the maiden, for She-who-has-been-missed, for Spring. (Long before the xians sent their son god up from the underworld after a three-day stay, my pipple, well, you know. Eleusias.) I want to eat peas, and spring greens spiced with slices of radish, and violet petals. I want to drink warm cream from a gentle cow, and wild parsley tea, and melted ice. I want to dance barefoot on sun-warmed new grass and I want to bury my nose in a baby's scalp and smell that perfect smell.

In my lovely city by the river, one of the loveliest signs that Spring, has, indeed, returned from the underworld, is when the cherry blossoms, planted mainly along the city's Tidal Basin, bloom. The exact date when they'll bloom is, in this ancient city, a subject of debate, and augury, and record keeping, and instinct. A warm day in February, a chill wind in March, even a few cloudy days in April -- almost anything can throw off the best guesses of ancient and practiced blossom watchers, of large computers humming in the basements of sandstone government buildings, of learned scientists at the Smithsonian, of lovers planning picnics, of merchants making magical amulets.

One of the THE most magical nights of my life came nigh on 20 years ago, when the blossoms unexpectedly bloomed in mid-March, under a huge full Moon that shone just above the Jefferson Memorial, and I was in love with the Moon and Jefferson and the water and the trees and the blossoms and I learned, through pleasure sharp as a lover's whip, that this city, on a river, with monuments of marble and statues of alabaster and fountains of opal and quartz, was, indeed, built of magic and indeed needed sex to keep it alive.

The cherry blossoms are a koan for the Charge of the Goddess: [K]now that the seeking and yearning will avail you not. No picture of them, no video, no written description can give you the experience of being surrounded by millions and millions of cherry blossoms. I have experienced them in the sunrise, the warm mid day, the sunset, the moonrise, the sudden snow. I have flown home from across the globe and gotten cab drivers to stop for me at the Tidal Basin, dropped my bags, kicked off my pumps, and run to the water's edge to see the last pink blossoms floating softly on the gentle waves. I have loved them at that most magical moment when the sun is thinking of setting and the temperature drops the first degree and these "scentless" blooms give up their scent and you are in the arms of the Goddess, you are making love to the world, you are dancing naked in silks across the sky, you are, well, you are breathing in Gaia saying "Namaste," and it's all, it's all, it's all just, it's all just Spring in Washington, DC.


Photo here.

Ostara Centerpiece

Forsythias all over my neighborhood are in bloom. These are from my bush in the backyard.

The Seven Of Pentacles By Marge Piercy

Last night, my brilliant friend E. read this poem at our Ostara ritual. I'd forgotten how much I like it. The Seven, Eight, and, especially, Nine of Pentacles cards are v. important ones for me and show up v. often in readings that I do for myself. Piercy has a great way of looking at the Seven card, one that goes beyond the traditional satisfied, at rest, giving things time vs. dissatisfied, introspective, watching the pot boil interpretations of this card.



Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Cherry Blossoms

I love everything that BPAL makes.

HANAMI
Sleeping under the trees on Yoshino mountain
The spring breeze wearing cherry blossom petals

In Japan, the advent of spring is heralded by a blanket of pink and white that spreads gently from the South to the North to cover the islands. Hana-mi translates to "flower watching", and it is a sport of leisure that has been enjoyed since the Heian Period.

Here, in Washington, D.C., we are blessed with hundreds of Japanese cherry blossom trees, planted around the tidal basin, adorning the Jefferson Memorial, creating magic in the city. The best time, in terms of avoiding the often crippling crowds, to see the blossoms is at dawn. Its you, a few breakfast picnickers with champagne and bagels and strawberries. But the best time to see the cherries, really, is at that moment in late afternoon when, as the sun sinks below the horizon, the temperature drops just a degree or two. That causes the cherry blossoms to give off their scent. Now, if you smelled just one, or just a hundred, cherry blossoms, you'd say that they had no scent. But when millions of them give off their scent all at once and you are blessed to be standing in the middle of them, then, you realize that cherry blossoms smell AMAZING. They smell exactly the way that early Spring smells, exactly the way that magic smells, exactly the way that dawn smells. If you can do it standing across from Thomas Jefferson with a crescent moon hanging over the monument and the water, well, then you can die happy.

Hedge Witch

Now, the purple hellebore is here, hot on the heels of the less-impressive white hellebore. And I've got my first daffodil, one of the minitures. The deep purple crocus are here, as well, just a few days after the white, gold, and light purple ones.

Downtown, I've seen the odd cherry tree and Bradford pear tree in bloom, although the cherry blossoms along the tidal basin are not expected until the last week of March. In my neighborhood, forsythia planted in sunny spots is now in bloom, although mine, deep in shade, hasn't opened at all. I may pick some this weekend to bring inside and force.

PS: Shot w/ my iPhone, not the lovely camera that 4LG gave me, so these are a bit blurry.

The Season Of The Witch

I've been thinking this week about what it means for a crone to celebrate Ostara.

Ostara, one of the eight major Wiccan holidays, is generally associated with the maiden aspect of the Goddess (when the Goddess is seen as maiden/mother/crone). It's Spring! New life! Bunnies! Lambs! Flowers! Persephone! Flora! What does that mean for a crone? (Yeah, I like the flowers and I love the returning warmth. And I can look fondly back upon the (v. confused, but v. brave) maiden that I was. That's not a Sabbat.)

But Ostara is also a holiday of balance. On the Spring Equinox, there is an equal amount of day and night. For me, the tarot cards associated with balance are Temperance, the High Priestess, the Moon, Justice, the Two of Pentacles, and, oddly, the Hanged Man. So many major arcana (hence, v. important) cards. Balance is clearly an important archetype and an element of many archetypes or it wouldn't show up so often in the tarot. And, yet, when the Hanged Man showed up recently in a v. important reading that I did for myself, it meant: the only way to succeed at this is to turn your own life upside down. To quote Rumi: "Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let's buy it." Let's turn you upside down!

Balance is an important issue in the lives of so many witches. My own Moon in Taurus is always begging for balance, while my Ascendent Gemini longs to throw all caution to the winds and GO ALL OUT and my Sun in Pisces queries, "Balance? What's balance? Look at this v. exciting extremism that someone else is practicing!" When I was younger, my Sun and Ascendent signs won the battle. Now that I'm older, my Moon, often associated with the Inner Child, wins as often as not.

I keep preaching that magic is supposed to help one to live a more, not less, effective (well-balanced) life. What does that mean for members of an essentially ecstatic religion? Ecstasy, itself, is an oddly unbalanced state. And yet, those who practice balance -- eating a healthy diet, doing yoga, meditating, caring for their material needs so that they don't impinge -- those people are often the ones most able to throw themselves into ecstasy. From the greatest discipline, someone once said, comes the greatest freedom.

Tonight, my madcap friend R. gifted me with a lovely triptych of Tara. I'm drawn (that way, no wait, I'm not Jessica Rabbit!) to extreme Goddesses: Hecate, Baba Yaga, Cerridwen. Yet, those are not the Goddesses who have come to me in dreams. The Goddesses who've visited me in important dreams have been Mary, the Blessed Mother, Quan Yin, Brigid, and Green Tara, sweet, comforting, supportive goddesses (at least in my dreams) all. Balance. Balance between the dark, windswept crossroads and the warm and comfortable Irish kitchen in a downpour. Balance between the wild woman of the forest and the smiling, kind, Mother Mary, who, on my mother's kitchen plaque, offered a warm loaf of bread to the baby Jesus. Balance between the serious magician, stirring a witch's brew within which all things melt, recombine, become something unexpected and new, and the kind, black covered in green, Goddess who wants to hand out practical goodness. Balance between the champion way that I worry and the way that the kind Goddess and her consort who showed up at an important time in my life tell me: It will be ok.

For this crone, Ostara is a time to celebrate balance, to welcome balance, to dream of balance, to do divination looking for balance, to live, as a witch must live, as the Earth, right now, lives, in balance.